VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME: A DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE*

Although numerous theories suggest that voluntary organizations contribute to lower crime rates in neighborhoods, the evidence for this proposition is weak. Consequently, we propose a dynamic perspective for understanding the relationship between voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime that involves longitudinal analyses and the measurement of the age of organizations. By using longitudinal data on a sample of census blocks (N = 87,641) located across 10 cities, we test the relationship between age‐graded measures of different types of voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime rates. We use fixed‐effects negative binomial regression models that focus on change within neighborhoods of the relationship between voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime. Our results show that although each type of voluntary organization is found to exhibit crime‐reducing behavior in neighborhoods, we find that many of them are consistent with what we refer to as the “delayed impact scenario”—there is a pronounced delay between the placement of a voluntary organization and a neighborhood subsequently experiencing a reduction in crime. With protective effects of organizations typically not demonstrated until several years after being in the neighborhood, these patterns suggest a need for long‐term investment strategies when examining organizations.     

Why Solidarity Matters: The Political Strategy of Welfare Design

Reporting on our recent book, The Solidarity Society, this article explores the way in which the design of welfare programmes interacts with and shapes the underlying quality of social relations between members of society—and, through this, public attitudes to welfare. Given that sustaining generous welfare over long timescales requires the support of electorates, this ‘relational’ dimension of welfare policy is crucial for the long‐term strategy of tackling poverty and inequality. The article looks in particular at the ‘welfare dilemmas’ that can arise from tensions between targeting and universalism and between need and entitlement, where the distributional and relational elements of welfare policy work against one another. We conclude that entrenching a generous welfare settlement will require strong elements of both universalism and reciprocity in the design of welfare.     

NGO-state collaboration and the new policy agenda—the case of subsidized credit

This article is intended to contribute to debate over how development agencies should respond to what they perceive to be a new Washington-based policy agenda, and particularly with the question of whether collaboration with official agencies implementing that agenda may weaken more radical or alternative visions of development. The approach adopted is to locate these general arguments within a more narrowly defined policy arena—subsidization of credit. The second and third sections distinguish between a range of different points of view over credit subsidies within the World Bank and international NGOs, respectively. The fourth section then discusses opportunities and threats arising from NGO-donor collaboration, particularly co-finance agreements. The article also illustrates the need (a) to distinguish carefully between different elements of the new policy agenda, and (b) to analyse the diversity of views within development agencies as well as between them. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why Information? Choosing Committee Informativeness in U.S. State Legislatures

Using a new dataset drawn from American state legislatures, I modeled the informativeness of legislative committees as a choice over institutions. I found higher informativeness to be associated with better preparedness for information transfer, morepartisan chambers, and higher demand for information combined with greater incentives to control committee assignments. These associations shed light on congressional committee informativeness. A simple model of committee informativeness can predict the informativeness of the U.S. House's committees.     

Measuring portfolio salience in Eastern European parliamentary democracies

Abstract.  This article presents the results of an expert survey of 14 Eastern European countries on the subject of portfolio salience. Respondents provided ratings of the relative value of all ministerial portfolios in these countries over the years 1990–2002. The ratings are unique in the study of Eastern Europe and appear to possess the characteristics of comprehensiveness and reliability. Comparing the results with a similar survey of Western Europe indicates that individual portfolios are rated nearly identically in both regions. Some significant differences, however, emerge when we look separately at more advanced and less advanced Eastern European countries. Various suggestions are made for how scholars can use these new data in future work.     

Book Reviews

Michael Pugh, ed., The UN, Peace, and Force (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 208 pp.

Caroline Kennedy‐Pipe, The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland (London: Longman, 1997), 204 pp.

Alan O'Day, ed., Political Violence in Northern Ireland: Conflict and Conflict Resolution (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 248 pp.

Iver B. Neumann and Ole Waever, eds., The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 380 pp.     

NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL MEASURES OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTION AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR: A META‐ANALYSIS*

A meta‐analysis was performed to quantify the association between antisocial behavior (ASB) and performance on neuropsychological executive functioning (EF) measures. This meta‐analysis built on Morgan and Lilienfeld's (2000) meta‐analysis of the same topic by including recently published studies and by examining a wider range of EF measures. A total of 126 studies involving 14,786 participants were included in the analyses. Antisocial groups performed significantly worse on measures of EF compared with controls, with a grand mean effect size of d= .44. Significant variation occurred in the magnitude of effect sizes calculated across studies. The largest effect sizes were found for criminality (d= .61) and externalizing behavior disorder (d= .54) ASB groups, whereas the smallest effect sizes were found for antisocial personality disorder (d= .19) groups. Larger differences in EF performance were observed across studies involving participants from correctional settings and with comorbid attention deficit and hyperactivity problems. Overall, the results indicated that a robust association exists between ASB and poor EF that held across studies with varied methodological approaches. The methodological issues in the research literature and the implications of the meta‐analysis results are discussed, and the directions for future research are proposed.